


The Hunter

by GrapefruitZest



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, John Rider/Helen Rider, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28425678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrapefruitZest/pseuds/GrapefruitZest
Summary: John Rider might be new to Scorpia, but he is an old hand when it comes to the intelligence world, and he is not impressed the first time he meets a young Yassen Gregorovich. He’s also swimming in very deep waters, although he might not know it yet...
Relationships: John Rider/Julia Rothman, Yassen Gregorovich/John Rider
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	The Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks for stopping by! Note that I’ll most likely be adding more tags as I go along.

John Rider followed the servant leading him through the ground floor of the Widow’s Palace and up the stairs to Julia Rothman’s study. It was his second time here, but it was no less intimidating than the first. The hallways on the first floor were completely lined with paintings - he recognised one of them as a Van Gogh but not the others, though they doubtless were similarly expensive and rare. The sheer amount of wealth on display was staggering, even to John, who has spent many of his post-Oxford days rubbing shoulders with British aristocracy.

He knew that Scorpia taught art not an hour away from Venice at Malagosto; how to mingle with and seduce the rich and powerful and kill them for money. John Rider didn’t believe in such fanciful rubbish. He had been a soldier in a previous life, and while he could stand still for five minutes to appreciate a painting, he couldn’t stand the thought of flattering someone with a shared love of Renaissance art and drugging them while they slept. A bullet to the head was a lot simpler.

Julia - she had asked him to call her that during the last visit - was waiting for him. She stood from behind an ornate wooden desk as he entered and advanced towards him, her heels clicking ominously as they made contact with the floor.

“John,” she smiled. Her lipstick, a deep shade of red, contrasted beautifully against her pale skin. “Please, have a seat.”

They found themselves on a couple of armchairs with a coffee table between them. A servant stepped out from the shadows and poured out tea before wordlessly retreating.

John crossed his legs and leaned back in his seat. He waited for Julia to say something, but she stared straight at him, like a scientist examining a particularly interesting insect under a microscope. It was a test of wills, one that he had passed dozens of times in his meetings with superiors from the army and especially the intelligence services. This one was different, though. For one, it was the first time he reported to a woman. And for another, he was a double agent, and if Julia Rothman found out he would be better off dead.

Finally, Julia spoke. “Welcome back, John. Tell me how you did.”

It was a question that John had prepared for. He’d flown in from Spain earlier this morning. The completion of his first mission, the assasination of a politician while he was holidaying in the Canary Islands. The citizen of a country on friendly terms with the UK, and MI6 had helped fake his death and arrange for him a new identity. John had spent hours in his hotel room earlier rehearsing for this, and he now told Julia Rothman a tale of how he gunned down the politician on a public beach.

Julia smiled when he reached the part about his death. “Where did you shoot him?”

“Twice in his chest,” he recalled. “And once in the head.” This would be corroborated by the autopsy report from the local hospital.

“Between his eyes?” Julia asked. The MI6 psychologists had warned him that she could be a psychopath, but John still felt strangely unprepared as he described how the politician had died in more detail than he cared to know about.

John watched as Julia turned over the information in her head for a moment before she gave a slight nod of approval. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” She suddenly asked.

“No,” he said, his posture radiating nothing but calm and certainty. Inside, his heart beat a thousand times a minute, wondering if this was all a trap and Julia Rothman knew he was a double agent from day one and was simply toying with him.

After a long moment of intense scrutiny, Julia finally nodded again. “Congratulations,” she said. “On behalf of the board, I’d like to welcome you to Scorpia.”

Julia extended a manicured hand, nails painted red to match her lipstick, and John shook it briefly but firmly. He did not allow himself to celebrate, not at this moment, but once he left the Widow’s Palace he would treat himself to some of the whisky that he carried around in his briefcase for special occasions.

“Your codename will be Hunter. Every moving thing that lives shall be prey for you. The hunter studies his environment and his prey. He has utmost patience, waiting for days for a clean shot. You will be Scorpia’s weapon, sent to destroy our enemies.”

John opened his mouth to say that this wasn’t what he wanted. He’d asked to spend more time focused on teaching at Malagosto so that he could get a better idea of how the organization operated and who it employed.

Julia held up a hand. “We have not forgotten your interest in teaching at Malagosto,” she continued, handing a file over. “We were thinking of trying something out instead. Some of our students could benefit from one-on-one tutelage. This young man is new to this line of work and he could use a steady hand along with some practical experience... His name is Yassen Gregorovich.”

* * *

That evening, John found himself alone on the balcony of his hotel room going through Yassen’s file. The pictures attached to the first page showed a young man - teenager, really - thin from malnourishment and stress. His lips looked like they were frequently chewed on, there were bags under his eyes, and his face was gaunt. John felt a little twinge of something in his gut as he flipped through the pictures. Everything about Yassen screamed vulnerable and he looked like the furthest thing from John’s impression of a Scorpia recruit, which made John wonder what Scorpia could have seen in him to give him a place at Malagosto. John found himself hesitating for a moment, wondering about what he was going to find in the rest of the file, then he refilled his drink and flipped the page.

Yassen had spent the last four years working as some sort of live-in servant for a Russian mobster, escaping with the Scorpia assassin who had arrived to kill him. John was not sure what this told him. The kid found a spot of good luck for once? His prior escape attempts were all irrationally thought out and poorly executed, and John didn’t think he would have made the same mistakes in his position.

Unlike the other Scorpia operatives that John knew, Yassen did not have a background in intelligence or the military. In fact, he had very little prior experience of any sort. He did not complete his secondary school education, and the only remotely relevant experience that could have interested John was the couple of months that Yassen had spent on the street in Moscow when he was fourteen, living a life of petty theft and crime. Hardly the sort of qualified operative that John had imagined when Julia Rothman had boasted about Scorpia’s high talent bar during their initial meeting.

Yassen’s file explained why Scorpia had made the decision to hire him. He had no identity of any sort. The Russian government had destroyed all traces of him and his family when they had razed his village to the ground in a massive cover-up operation. He was an orphan, with no living relatives to speak of. He was a nobody, and without Russia willing to acknowledge that he was their citizen, he would be that much harder to pin down.

For a long time, John sat there thinking about the situation. His orders from Alan Blunt had been simple - intelligence gathering. No unnecessary risks. John would do his best to help Yassen in his chosen career path, no tricks involved. Simple and straightforward.

All in all, Yassen was a risky investment. One unlikely to pay off. If you were caught at the scene of a crime, it didn’t matter if you existed in a database prior to then or not. John briefly wondered if Julia Rothman had intentionally set him up to fail here. She was a woman who loved power, and she would love nothing more than to have him begging for mercy at her feet after a failure. John swiftly pushed that thought out of his head just as quickly as it entered. It was the sort of insidious fear that would lead to nothing good. He had already proven himself to Scorpia, and they had no reason to test him like that. Alan Blunt and Julia Rothman both trusted in his abilities to do this job. All John Rider had to do was trust himself.

With his reading done for the night, John polished up the rest of his drink and stepped into the bathroom. It was still early in the evening, and John didn’t have anything to do for the rest of the week when he was supposed to travel to New York City to observe Yassen’s first mission.

The hotel had been recommended by Scorpia, who - quite conveniently for John - was also footing the bill. It was built in the fifteenth century and had been falling into ruins for centuries before it had been bought by a wealthy businessman twenty years back and painstakingly restored to its original condition. John’s room overlooked one of the main canals and was lavishly furnished; the sheets on the double bed were Egyptian cotton and the bathroom had a marble tub. A part of John wished that Helen was here to enjoy this with him, but he knew that, unlike Julia Rothman, she would be uncomfortable with the wealth they would be surrounded by. And he’d sworn to himself that he would never directly expose Helen to the dangerous snake pit that was Scorpia.

John sat on the toilet, thinking of Helen. The last time they’d been alone together was less than two weeks ago when he’d stopped over for a day in London on the way to Spain. Now, he had no problems recollecting the way she looked and smelled as he slowly stroked himself. Slowly at first, then faster as he pictured the visit before that when they had cuddled and made love, their limbs intertwined and sticky with sweat. Then - a flash of heels, red fingernails, lipstick and a beautiful, cunning smile - and he came abruptly on his own face.

“Fuck,” John muttered, reaching blindly for toilet paper to clean himself up.


End file.
